Declining album sales, the race to buy the rights to outer space and how burgers may cause asthma

- I guess all those efforts, crusades and campaigns to stop illegal sharing and downloading of music aren’t having their desired effect, eh recording industry? Not if the figures released this week by Nielsen Soundscan are accurate. For the week ending May 30, Soundscan claimed the U.S. music industry sold a total of 4,984,000 albums. That figure is the lowest of any week since the company began compiling this data in 1994. It includes new and catalog releases, so having numbers that low is cause for concern within the recording industry. The total is more than three quarters of a million units less than those sold for the week ending May 31, 2009, when the total was 5.76 million. By comparison, the highest one-week tally recorded during the Soundscan era is 45.4 million albums, in late December, 2000. Major record levels now face a scary future in which the touring scene is changing and album sales are clearly in a freefall that no one sees a way out of. Not that any further negative news is needed at this point, but Billboard estimates that weekly album sales total could actually be the lowest since the early 1970s.

"We think this is the lowest week ever, or at least of the Soundscan era," says Universal Music Group Distribution president Jim Urie. The Recording Industry Association of America, which should know such things, puts the number of album shipments in 1973 at 388.2 million units, an average of 7.47 million per week. The two figures - albums sold as opposed to shipped - are obviously different, so Billboard looked at the relationship between annual album shipments as measured by the RIAA and annual albums sold, as compiled by Soundscan, for the years 1992-2009. Over that time, shipments exceeded scans by an average of 30 percent and applying that same standard to the 1973 RIAA album shipment data, weekly album sales volume for that year may have been in the vicinity of 5.5 million units. Top industry executives concur that this week's album sales total of 4.98 million units is "pretty scary," in the words of Bruce Ogilvie, CEO of leading music wholesaler Super D. Predictably, those in the industry are citing these numbers as evidence for an increased focus on getting Congress to introduce legislation that aligns Internet service providers and record labels in fighting piracy. Not that anything else has worked in stopping people in their quest for free music, but go ahead and lobby for that, recording industry………….

- Say hello to the future of the American space program. With President Obama slashing funding for NASA and all but ripping the right to explore space from the agency, we now must turn to men like PayPal co-founder Elon Musk and his new company, Space Exploration Technologies, for our outer space fix. On Friday, SpaceX’s first launch test for its own rocket took place. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after an earlier attempt to launch Friday was aborted seconds before ignition. The entire project was paid for by a man named Musk and many in the world of all things spacey believe that his project could serve as a symbol of the future and carry astronauts and cargo to the international space station. The Falcon 9 carries a mockup of its space capsule, called Dragon, as part of its payload. With its budget going in the wrong direction in a hurry, NASA hopes companies such as SpaceX can take over transportation to the international space station. "It's time for NASA to hand that over to commercial industry who can then optimize the technology and make it more reliable, make it much lower cost and make it much more routine," Musk said. Oddly enough, this guy believes the U.S. is at the beginning of a major renaissance in space exploration, perhaps greater than at any other time in our nation’s history. "If the country executes and the administration and Congress execute in that direction, the impact of these changes will be on par, perhaps even greater, than ... the task that Kennedy put us on to," he said. Of course, one has to wonder if the privatization of space travel will spark the same cries of socialism that every other Obama administration decision has seemed to incur, whether those cries were merited or had any basis in reality or not. Maybe private companies will find newer, more efficient ways to conduct space travel than NASA, who knows. NASA selected SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences, to each develop an orbital vehicle because the U.S. will soon be without its own ride to the space station. Instead, we’ll be renting space from the Russians aboard their Soyuz spacecraft. SpaceX has plenty of competitors in the race to space among private contractors and has already spent nearly $400 million to get there. Along the way, there will undoubtedly be setbacks; SpaceX acknowledges that much. Still, the company has former astronaut Ken Bowersox is a vice president, the same Ken Bowersox who flew five space shuttle missions as a commander and pilot and lived on the space station for more than five months as its commander. "Either way, we're going to learn something," Bowersox said. "If we have a problem, we can move forward accepting a higher level of risk. That's how we can be more cost-effective." As for its maiden flight, Falcon 9 was in the air for about 10 minutes and deployed the mock Dragon capsule into a 155-mile orbit. That orbit would last for a year, after which the capsule would orbit for about a year and burn up in the atmosphere. If everything goes into plan and subsequent test flights are similarly successful, Musk says SpaceX will be ready to begin flying cargo to the space station next year. Still, it would be up to NASA to award the contract to SpaceX and allow Musk and Co. to begin ferrying astronauts to the space station within three years. "We want to see a future where we are exploring the stars, where we're going to other planets, where we're doing the great things that we read about in science fiction and in the movies," Musk said. So welcome to the new frontier of space, where the right to fly the friendly galaxy skies belongs to the highest bidder…………

- Chace Crawford, you have a couple of options right now. After being arrested for possession of pot in your hometown Plano, Texas, early Friday morning, you can do one of two things: 1) claim it wasn’t your hippie lettuce and you were holding it for a friend, or 2) say you were doing research for a future role. Both are tried and true tactics any time a celebrity is busted for possession of the chronic. Fact is, there are going to be a lot of very mean people out there saying a lot of harsh things about the "Gossip Girl" actor because he was arrested on a marijuana charge. Sure, it’s only a misdemeanor charge involving possession of less than two ounces of marijuana, but the naysayers don’t care about the amount of tree you possessed or the severity of the charges against you. Even though the charge carries a maximum of 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, first offenders can usually expect a year or less probation. In other words, Crawford will get a slap on the wrist, maybe some community service, counseling, etc. Personally, I don’t have a huge beef with the guy in this situation. I have more of an issue with his crappy glorified soap opera of a show on the steaming, stinking pile of monkey crap that show calls its home network. Besides, you all know my affinity for stoners. They’re peace-loving, mellow people who just want to chill out, get baked, watch TV and munch on tasty snacks. So if Crawford wants to ride around in his 2003 Nissan 350Z with a measly two ounces of bud on his person, don’t bother him. Celebrities have too many people hassling them when they go out in public anyhow. Autograph seekers, paparazzi, etc. are all over them, so the last thing they need is the police up in their face too. Leave this guy alone, leave stoners in general alone and let’s try to focus on more pressing issues in society than arresting and jailing Nate Archibald of "Gossip Girl" notoriety…………

- I don’t know that there is anything terribly surprising or important about Danny Ferry resigning Friday as general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers after five seasons. Whether Ferry sits in the GM’s chair or assistant GM Chris Grant takes over for Ferry, neither of them is running the Cavs at this point. That job, ironically, is occupied by a guy who will soon be opting out of his contract with the team and becoming a free agent, a Mr. LeBron James. James is the one calling the shots in Cleveland and whatever he wants as a condition to re-sign with the team, owner Dan Gilbert is going to give him. The first move in this chess game came after James shut it down and his team choked in an Eastern Conference semifinal loss to Boston after it became apparent they were overmatched. Head coach Mike Brown was fired and the speculation began as to who would replace him. The move may have caused issued between Gilbert and Ferry, who hired Brown five years ago. Whatever the case, with Ferry’s contract up at the end of the month, Gilbert decided to hand the reigns to Grant. What’s funny is that rumors of University of Memphis coach John Calipari returning to the NBA and being the preferred coach of James, numerous sources stated that there was no way Ferry would stand for having Calipari come in and assume the powerful role he would undoubtedly have to receive in order to leave Memphis. Now, Ferry is gone, the Cavs still don’t have a coach and they are still as willing as ever to capitulate to any demands James may have. "It's the right time to move on," Ferry said in an interview after resigning. "I thought it was important that there was as much clarity as possible in the organization at this time, so things could start moving forward. It's important that whomever is hired as the head coach knows and understands the people he is going to work with." In other words, I saw what was coming and for reasons that will soon become clear to the rest of you, I didn’t like it, not one bit. As amazing as it may be to see a team get rid of both its coach and GM despite winning 143 games the past two seasons, the fact is that Ferry and Brown failed in the ultimate goal: bringing a championship to Cleveland. Gilbert is a megalomaniacal, egotistical titan of business who will not tolerate anything less than absolute success. "You've got to be willing to take some risks, calculated ones, and make changes when they're necessary," Gilbert said after Ferry stepped down/was fired. And no, I don’t buy the story that Ferry and Gilbert made a mutual decision not to renew Ferry’s contract. If you believe that, the I’ve got a beautiful chunk of oceanfront land in Nebraska I’d like to sell you. Gilbert is grasping at straws in his frantic push to re-sign James and anyone who isn’t fully on board with doing anything - ANYTHING - it takes to make that happen is going to be tossed overboard. How great it must be right now, being a Cavs fan and knowing that the entire future of your franchise in the hands of a guy who could be holding up another team’s No. 6 jersey at an introductory press conference in less than a month…………

- Not that we didn’t already know this, but burgers are not good for your health. They might be lighter on the wallets and bank accounts of people looking for a fast, cheap food item to cram down their pie hole, but their effect on those who consumer them - especially children - may be heavier than anyone realized. According to a new study conducted by Dr. Gabriele Nagel in the Institute of Epidemiology at Ulm University, “high burger consumption is associated with higher lifetime asthma prevalence” for children. The findings were published in the recent issue of the journal Thorax and for purposes of the study, high burger consumptions was defined as eating three or more a week. Nagel and his colleagues analyzed data collected on 50,000 children for 10 years in 20 rich and poor countries to examine how diet affected asthma or food allergies. They asked parents about their children’s normal diet and whether they had ever had asthma or bad wheezing. Not surprisingly, they found that children who consumed burgers at a high rate had a higher incidence of asthma than kids who are healthier foods like fruit, vegetables and fish. This could be because “fast food is rich in industrially hydrogenated vegetable fats such as margarine and meat from ruminant animals which are dietary sources of trans-fatty acids,” researchers postulated. "The frequency of burger consumption could be considered as a proxy for unknown lifestyle factors which may vary depending on the societal context, environmental and other lifestyle factors.” So go ahead and add “possible cause of asthma in children” to the list of negative effects that fatty, greasy burgers may have on people, right alongside clogged arteries, heart disease, obesity, indigestion and plenty more. And we wonder why we’re the FAT-test, unhealthiest nation around, America………..